Wikimore

for older archives, see User talk:Fæ/2021, User talk:Fæ/2020, User talk:Fæ/2019, et seq.

Old projects

Exemplars for historical documents and maps projects
Scan released last year at the Internet Archive
New upload of 1887 address book for Riga, Latvia. (800mb).
Example map, (created 1774) high resolution map of Africa, approx 373 megapixels in size, similar to a 5 foot square printed poster.

I had a look back at the IA upload project and realized that none of these scripts run because of Python, Pywikibot and internetarchive changes. It turns out I find it quite difficult to remember almost anything about these projects too. So don't be surprised if I'm testing it out and there are flaws. I'll do my best to repair any oddities. I'm seeing '+99' notices from my account which doesn't clear, could be a wm bug for big numbers, so I might not notice changes. It's not deliberate. For the moment please don't ask me to take on large projects, I'd rather pace myself at 'slow'. Fæ (talk) 13:07, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, and welcome back! — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 08:11, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Another new "feature" of the Wikimedia API is ratelimiting. Added a couple of slow down precautions including slapping down multiprocessing, but it's definitely dogging uploads despite being visible to the API as an established user. It may be necessary to revisit the throttling system rather than bumping into it. It's sad this creates extra work for volunteers.

For the first time the queries found restricted items at Internet Archive like 1826histoirenumismatiquedelare, where the Washington University appears to be claiming copyright in a 200 year old publication. Good grief, I hope this is not a trend that IA is tolerating. --Fæ (talk) 07:09, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

I have updated a process for finding the text of Google cover pages in the recent uploads. The 'pending' queue is at Category:OCR detected cover page. Yet to update the page removal process. There's no hurry and I will get to this slowly. --Fæ (talk) 06:29, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Note that larger files, like the 800mb PDF transcluded, are now possible thanks to limits changing. The larger files might cause things to break, sometimes in predictable ways like the SHA check from mediawiki taking some time to process and be available on the system. Behind the scenes, these uploads do not behave well and invariably fail to report back that they are successfully uploaded. Fæ (talk) 14:26, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Extra note about maps - though there is a fairly quick upload of jpegs of maps to Category:David_Rumsey_Historical_Map_Collection, which may take a couple of days, there is a much, much slower process to recover high resolution versions. A rough estimate is that this could take 2 or perhaps 4 months, partly due to the new WMF API throttling limits more than processing time. --Fæ (talk) 12:44, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

@Fæ: Couldn't you technically request permission for the upscale to run on Faebot so it is exempt from the API rate limits? --Nintendofan885^{T&Cs apply} 13:30, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

From what is available to easily read about it, probably not. Faebot has a bot flag, but a brief experiment shows that the API throttle is using IP address. Consequently the map uploads being mentioned here are being forced to sleep 90s before the upload is allowed to complete and then there's another 90s for the filepage to be updated with formatting or a category. These events are in a multiprocessing queue but it makes no difference for the API whether it's a bot or not, or whether Pywikibot can set a bot flag for the action.

Keep in mind, I'm trying not to spend hours at a keyboard, so not looking for complex extra volunteer work or phabricator requests for a fairly modest 50,000 files. Fæ (talk) 13:41, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Faebot has got running on the somewhat revised toolforge, so the mass link fixing has been moved to the WMF servers and that at least is 6x faster as a result and reduced local processing by about 7%. Other stuff might move there eventually. Fæ (talk) 14:50, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

Fresh eye this morning, and the map upgrading is running around 4x faster locally and probably is obeying the new WMF API throttling rules. The run might be 6 weeks rather than 4 months, which is fine. Fæ (talk) 06:39, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

@Fæ: Nice. FYI the bot flags on Faebot and Noaabot were removed when you went inactive so it shows up as a regular user on Special:RecentChanges. --Nintendofan885^{T&Cs apply} 19:15, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Darn, forgot about that. Thanks for pointing it out. Maybe that is why there's been such bad throttling on these projects. Fæ (talk) 07:55, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

Welcome back

As you probably have worked out, I've been following this talk page, checking whether DRs of your uploads are valid or not, and responding to the DR with a rationale if I think something should be kept. May I assume you are sufficiently "back" that I can let go of monitoring that?

Welcome back, in any case. - Jmabel ! talk 14:06, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

If you wish, though I'll probably continue to ignore most DRs and let others chip in. After your first million images, the DRs that matter are ones that are a meaningful case study for thousands of others and could be collated with some automated method.

I have noticed your patient work and very much appreciate it! Fæ (talk) 15:21, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, welcome back! So glad to see this. Krok6kola (talk) 16:06, 3 June 2026 (UTC)
It's been almost 5 years. I hope you had a good time! Welcome back. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 10:03, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

@Fæ Yes, happy to see you here again :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 09:32, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Good to see you again, also from me. -- Deadstar (msg) 10:27, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Marvellous to see you editing again. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:15, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Happy you are back! Nosferattus (talk) 18:15, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

It is great to have your presence here again on Commons Fæ. All the best -- Ooligan (talk) 16:12, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Welcome back!

Russian Empire 1883 genealogy interest, 1.16gb, mediawiki struggles at this size.

Looks like you were gone for a bit. Are you working on any new large chunks of uploads? RAN (talk) 21:44, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Slightly updated the internetarchive PDF uploading, so these are being refreshed:

Category:Scans from University of Toronto

Category:Old books from American Libraries - this in particular needs contributors to surf the content and imagine categories which can better break up the 150,000 books.

Category:David Rumsey Historical Map Collection - new content but a few thousand jpegs of interesting maps. Some review will be needed as the source library curators may have presumed their collections are public domain by age when it can be more complicated.

Category:Images dezoomed by Fæ is being ever so slowly populated by overwriting the small versions from IA. This is probably why this was not done years ago. Hopefully the maps will not be moved before this dezooming task finishes in several days time.

Category:Books in the Prelinger Library

Category:Genealogy books from the Internet Archive modest number of IA books under this collection but some are eye wateringly large, one has been having an upload attempt of over an hour for a 1,781.2 MB PDF; it may continue to fail though several that succeeded are at the 1gb size.

Category:IA books documents with one page is retrospectively populating. As far as I know, over several years, no volunteers have ever investigated these exceptions...

Quietly restarted the slow job of trimming Google cover pages off pdfs which is harder and slower on local processing. Also been experimenting with nccommons, behind the scenes that's been the ghastly issue of getting timedtext to work on videos and battling anti-bot tools for a site that in theory wants you to take their publications.

There is plenty of gnomic work, so for the moment not looking for anything controversial or technically too challenging. Little projects that do not mean sitting at a keyboard for more than an hour at a time are best. Fæ (talk) 05:20, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Are we ever going to get something like "search inside this book" when you are at the pdf page, like we get at Google Books? The only time is see the ASCII text is when I do a general search for all of Commons and I see a snippet, or when the book is transcribed at Wikisource. --RAN (talk) 18:59, 18 June 2026 (UTC)
The search can be used to find PDF contents matches and is a quick way to find prospective matches if doing copyright or cover page statement testing. For example ("This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations" filetype:pdf intitle:IA) will find PDFs with google cover pages. However there's no way of using the mediawiki to tell you what pages the text is on, or do anything else really smart with it. Well no easy designed way; vaguely remember doing something smarter but can't remember how that worked.

A solution for the IA uploads alone would be to navigate from the commons IA upload, back to IA and then interrogate either the djvu.txt file there, or the xml version. If one needed to filter through, say, 100,000 files, that would be way more efficient than having to download each one and run it through another OCR. Fæ (talk) 19:13, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

There is another way of using a wikimedia tool to do it, but not leaving breadcrumbs for it, as if overused it might get switched off. It solves specific issues of examining a page, but is not intended for a million entire books. --Fæ (talk) 13:15, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

+1. Very good to see you back. Jheald (talk) 13:10, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Purging thumbnails

Due to old glitches with uploads and other inscrutable problems with WMF operations, some of the very large categories of upload projects have multiple un-thumbnailed files with apparent 0x0 dimensions. These are fairly easy to search and repair individually by purging the cache, forcing a thumbnail refresh, but mass finding and repairing does not have an easy tool for non sysop users. Here's my current pywikibot based solution for fast purging given a category name from a terminal prompt. You just need to know how to install pywikibot, or have a toolforge session.

User:Fæ/code/thepurge

Fair warning, this is deliberately very fast but API throttling *probably* does not count purge actions as they are non-edits. Worth noting that in the example of incategory:Old_books_from_American_Libraries filewidth:<1 before the programme there were 2,433 files with zero width and after running (a couple of minutes duration) the same files show a correct thumbnail but the search results on-wiki incorrectly show the same number of 0x0 thumbnails. Presumably the database lag takes several minutes or maybe hours. Fæ (talk) 08:35, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Removing "Historic, Archive Document" cover pages

This cover page should be removed in a few weeks time.

The refresh of Biodiversity Heritage Library documents from the internet archive has highlighted again the old scans with an extra unattractive cover page with this warning notice. These cover pages were not used at the BHL original archive site, but seem to have been added by the scanners for the IA transfer. When the links to IA are followed, interestingly the cover page is skipped and the document is displayed from the real first page. Policies on these warning notices also seem to have changed and it probably fell out of fashion 9 years ago. Faebot is running through what will be around 100,000 of these pdfs to attempt to trim these manually added cover pages which vary in colour, size and even text between documents. It carefully tries to see if there is a blank second page, often faded to a cream colour, to trim off based on shade and the absence of text, but due to caution may leave these in place in around 25% of cases. The end result is that categories like Category:Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection/1929 are made fantastically more attractive to volunteers and the pdfs far more likely to be used in articles or elsewhere as is.

The task is attempting a batch to process daily via toolforge in alphabetical order and may take, say, 6 weeks. Fæ (talk) 09:03, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

For 'technical' reasons, this is no longer running in alphabetical order. It was simpler to let the housekeeping run on a random walk basis. --Fæ (talk) 14:55, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

File:Comic Con reveals Spangdahlem's true identity 150516-F-OG770-201.jpg

File:The Art Journal, vol. 71, 1909 (IA gri 33125006187864).pdf

File:The Art Journal, vol. 70, 1908 (IA gri 33125006187856).pdf

File:The Art Journal, vol. 68, 1906 (IA gri 33125006187831).pdf

File:The Art Journal, vol. 69, 1907 (IA gri 33125006187849).pdf

File:Boeing 737-522, Bulgaria Air JP6002730.jpg

File:Unicredit Tower (17593594469).jpg

Upload on demand

Hi, I I thought to create a upload-on-demand service where contributors could request a file in posting the ID on a page on Commons (which could be semi-protected to avoid issues, like Commons Delinker). I started coding for Gallica which needs some magic because they deny access to bots. Then I got banned from Gallica... 😥 Now you already have all the tools to do it for Internet Archive. You would not have to check for copyright status. The users requesting uploads would have to do it. What do you think? Regards, Yann (talk) 19:09, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

This exists at https://ia-upload.wmcloud.org/. Never used it myself, but others seem to.

My feeling is that it's a hostage to fortune because the licensing questions can be complex, however looking that the upload log, it's generally used mostly for uncontroversial items.

For my IA projects, I'm happy to see folks make requests at Commons:IA_books#Suggestions_for_Collection_Mirrors, so long as the suggestions are for at least a thousand or more works where copyright is easy to check. There's been some good suggestions so far, even if I'm very, very unhurried. --Fæ (talk) 19:51, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

For what I know, ia-upload was created mainly to create DjVu files, but it is now broken, as OCR is misaligned with the images. See answers to your post on s:en:Wikisource:Scriptorium#Commons internet archive based high resolution djvu creation. Yann (talk) 20:38, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

I believe it works for pdfs. As IA dropped djvu format, then a tool like this should be supported by wikisourcerers, if that is to be the preferred format. Though I just created a way to compile a very high resolution djvu or pdf from IA scans, it's really intended for specific collections rather than general use.

@Tpt: is there a plan to address the complaints about the IA uploader not rendering the text layer correctly? Folks seems quite reliant on it and I suspect the bug is something related to the way tools like pytesseract mark word coordinates versus how the djvu tools expect it to work. I'm also not sure about the wikisource workflow, so that might introduce issues too. Thanks Fæ (talk) 05:16, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

(Aside) - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Inductiveload/jump_to_file is the script at Wikisource which pulls hi-res scans from IA directly ( As it's accessing a third party site, it's unlikely to be considered for core inclusion or gadget status), you might wish to examine it, to see if it can be improved, or that the JSON approaches could be automated to supplement the PDF copies (with 'archival grade' djvu).. I am the user at Wikisource that asked Inductiveload to look into this, because for some of the CCE volumes PDF (especeially some earlier ones), and other works the overcompression present made the presented scans unreliable for transcription purposes. In addition sometimes the nature of the PDF generation at IA, and the display method used on the Wikimedia side, interacted to reduce the nominal display resolution unexpectedly ( A Technical issue that sometimes cropped up as the cover page was using a different background layer resolution compared to later pages, which the Wikimedia display back-end was applying to the whole document rather than just the cover. ) - Mis-clipped viweboxes, are something that cannot be resolved on the Wikimedia side. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:51, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

IA-Upload mentioned above also assumes that uploaders are competent, in checking certain details, If a high-res Index creator was under development, than it should ideally also consider meta-data the IA JOSN and IIIF manifests provide, possibly cross referenced into Wikidata, so that 'known' works with 'incompatible' licenses can be 'filtered' at the upload stage more easily, by warning uploaders to (re)check the status of a work. As we previously found, however sometimes the IA metadata is not fool-proof. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:51, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Welcome back!

Happy to see you here! Yacàwotçã (talk) 10:58, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

DPLA bot concerns...

The method used for certain meta-data doesn't seem to be compatible with the previous style of finding copyvios.

A serach query like - deepcat:"Media contributed by the Digital Public Library of America" insource:/Date\=19[6-8][1-9]/ hastemplate:NoC-US will not produce results, because the DPLA bot is using SDC exclusively.

Not a deal-breaker, but it means a more complex search enquiry..

The IA uploads by comparison were easy to check by a simple regex.. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:36, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Correct. As said about ten times now, the DPLA bot has no consensus to erase file page text. If in doubt raise for deletion, it seems to be what the DPLA want as they have given us little choice. Frankly it's bizarre as it literally costs less to leave old text on the page, even marking it as superseded by SDC info if they wish or even hiding it from view with html tags but staying visible in searches.

Terrible, I have zero interest in helping the project. Fæ (talk) 17:38, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

I am just a long-term contributor, and using "tabloid tactics' would be below the academic decorum required by the code of conduct. SDC is a good idea, if it can be queried.. For example: File:Mr._Bryan_in_1899-"I_Stand_Just_Where_I_Stood_Three_Years_Ago."_-_DPLA_-_9e31b287474bfea2ed2ca8f76a335ff7.pdf for example - is Public Domain, the source instiution feels it is. However, there is no simple date in the metadata, (nor indication of which original publication it came from.) As I said elswehere expecting Commons contributors to do academic level bibliogrpahic competence, which would be reasonably expected of a respected GLAM organisation, is a big ask.

(It's also a single page PDF, only containing raster data) which is generally discouraged on Commons.). ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:04, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Courtesy : User_talk:DPLA_bot#This_bot_removed_metadata_to_replace_it_with_SDC. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:23, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

1p PDF

@Fae: Do you have a means of scanning a category for singe page PDF? and categorising, I know you don't like the DPLA appraoch, but we can at least attempt mitigation of one of the concerns. You'd already started looking into single page IA pdf.. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:08, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Category:IA books documents with one page has been filled using a simple file.info check in pywikibot. This scanned a million files, so it's not fast at that scale. If you can state the use case it should not take a lot of effort to create but it's also best to constrain the filter in some way as scanning everything the DPLA has mass uploaded would probably take weeks rather than days.

Caution, grabbing the single page from the pdf and creating a png or jpg from it could give poor results if a better original scan is available. The process of creating the pdf is likely to have compressed or reduced the resolution.

Fæ (talk) 06:57, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

It's actually remarkable that at least 2 Commons regulars are defending the idea that the DPLA is uploading 50+ page text reports as single jpg image files of each page, despite the source website having the ability to supply pdfs of each report as a single file. There seems to be *a lot* of these. Compare that to the IA upload tiny number of single page pdfs.

Surprising as it's very hard to imagine that most of the text documents seen being imported so far would be of much educational value or be of interests for volunteers to work on. If the "interest" rate of these might be one in a thousand, such as where photographs are on a page, some effort should have been put in by the paid DPLA team to do this in a way that attracts volunteers. --Fæ (talk) 07:31, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

I had a check of one of the pdfs in Category:IA books documents with one page and not sure I would want to automate anything. Versions can be extracted from the jp2 scans at IA, and this could make an unreadable pdf version a transcribable version, but as there are only a few thousand files and the automation would be a headache considering some of these have extracted crops, and IA might vary in how the tar files are set up, it may be more hassle than encouraging volunteers to do the most interesting ones manually. Fæ (talk) 12:05, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

I had in mind images like the Cartoon I linked above, as I was advised that uploading raster images as PDF over JPG , PNG or TIF was discouraged, if they did not contain text ( like the examples from the IA category you've linked.).

I appreciate this may take months, rather than days to populate a category. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 07:33, 15 July 2026 (UTC) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 07:33, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

The quality issue is why raster only scans should not be PDF :)

deepcat:"Media contributed by the Digital Public Library of America" intitle:"pdf" has over 54,000 entries, checking by hand would be time consuming, (not implausible, just very time consuming). ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 07:43, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

That's fine, not many. Probably look after breakfast. Fæ (talk) 07:54, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

BTW rather than searching title filetype:pdf is probably more efficient. Fæ (talk) 09:27, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

See Category:DPLA uploaded pdf with one page. Due to the new WMF policy of throttling the blank out of volunteer actions, despite being a bot task this is taking over 3 minutes to save each categorization. Fæ (talk) 09:37, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Having multi-page reports as JPG , also complicates matters for potential Wikisource contributors, as working with individual scan image collections is more difficult to set up compared, to 'archival grade' systems like DJVU ( for which Proofread Page was actively designed.) (I know your views about DJVU being niche though.). The other reason for having multi-page documents was so that additional tools at Wikisource, can make use of the page numbering to potentially access relevant IIIF endpoints. (When the relevant script works, this has meant somewhat lo-quality PDF, can still be transcribed at Wikisource.)..

2 sub-categories created. The titles of those categories should be self explanatory. If you wanted to expand with summaries feel free, no obligation. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:42, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Category:DPLA uploaded pdf with one page Well it was less than expected (currently aroud 650) after I filtered , and I think it might have found some 'gaps' in collections of scans. If you want to into collating based on DLPA id's feel free. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:00, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Files moved by DPLA that are not DPLA uploads

These moves of file uploaded years before the DPLA project started, created a number of problems. Falsely taking credit for the Commons upload, deleting all wikitext, arbitrarily changing information templates to DPLA unique templates, arbitrarily forcing volunteers to edit SDC to make changes. This list is only those which have been restored to their original upload file names and had file page test restored, as originally uploaded. Based on a SQL result, there may be 218 files that I uploaded several years ago that have been moved and wiped in this way, on 12 July 2026. The DPLA operator has been cordially invited to fix these moves.

Restored files
File:Newspaper extract, March 1, (1816).jpg File:Letter signed John Todd to Thomas Jefferson, August 16, 1779.jpg File:J. S. Fullerton, Lieutenant Colonel, Assistant Adjutant General, U.S. Volunteers, Brevet Brigadier General.jpg

Pending moved files (11-12 July 2026)

Summary of all moves by DPLA which were originally uploaded by other accounts

original_uploader	total_files_moved
US National Archives bot	4106
RandomUserGuy1738	2711
Vanished Account Byeznhpyxeuztibuo	1911
Green Mostaza	344
Fæ	218
Mikey641	51
SecretName101	39
TaurusEmerald	34
Artix Kreiger 2	31
Artem.G	29
Neveselbert (mobile)	15
Denniscabrams	13
Frypie	13
Rhododendrites	12
EmiliaITČA	10
Dvaderv2	8
Kaiketsu	7
NATTOEAT	7
Svajcr	6
Animalparty	6
OceanAtoll	5
Thomas.R	5
Arnoseven	5
Joofjoof	5
Caddyshack01	5
PascalHD	4
Delaywaves	4
DinaHerbert	4
Érico	4
Abzeronow	4
Eyes Roger	4
Koavf	3
Iazyges	3
Lonparis	3
Infrogmation	3
S. DÉNIEL	3
Arbor to SJ	2
Huntster	2
Pandakekok9	2
Flickr upload bot	2
Ligunny	2
Spartan7W	2
Ltn12345	2
Victorgrigas	2
Srekcins	2
AbeautyfulMess06	2
Engelberthumperdink	2
Co9man	2
Hello32020	2
Kingofthedead	2
Numéro 1963	2
Colin	1
FelipeRev	1
Knightoftheswords281	1
Sikander	1
Cplakidas	1
Figureskatingfan	1
ITBF	1
Skulljujos	1
Tyler de Noche	1
Dan.g.nelson	1
Slick-o-bot	1
Found5dollar	1
Infoman99	1
Pitpisit	1
SnowyCinema	1
USSSequoia1	1
Asclepias	1
Free ori	1
Lpdrew	1
Quercusvirginiana	1
Uglemat	1
AsianStuff03	1
Detroit Stahl	1
Invaderchaos	1
RCraig09	1
Spintendo	1
Atomiccocktail	1
Fumikas Sagisavas	1
James.prideaux	1
M5	1
Spiralwidget	1
Bdblakley29	1
Dizzycheekchewer	1
FunnyMath	1
Jcmurphy	1
Mary Mark Ockerbloom	1
Rd232	1
VinceLeibowitz	1
BeeCeePhoto	1
Fuzzywuzzy123	1
Jengod	1
Maudslayer	1
Stv26	1
Wow	1
Bibliothecamex	1
Einstein95	1
JeremyNguyenGCI	1
Mike89	1
RoyZuo	1
Yann	1
Bizzarle	1
GRuban	1
Jo1971	1
Ruff tuff cream puff	1
Taro2968332	1
Box8087	1
Gamaliel	1
Moonreach	1
Taterian	1
方的1P	1
Cacen Gymraeg	1
Evrik	1
Moreau1	1
SDudley	1
Afernand74	1
HUDA ARABIA	1
Kaliforniyka	1
TeddyHuman	1
Chipmunkdavis	1
FSock	1
Happyme22	1
KatelynKat	1
Segagustin	1
TheImaCow	1
Apoxyomenus	1
FastilyClone	1
Shahzad	1
Themudmom1	1

--Fæ (talk) 07:52, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Claiming other uploads into a non-WMF originated archival system, isn't good, ( generally the only reason you had been keeping the IA identifer in the filename on your uploads was to distinguish between editions or duplicatively named works AIUI?) It would have been better if the DPLA bot, flagged up an already uploaded file with the original uploader, instead of making a presumption, some might see as being w:WP:OWN like. I think you need to raise the issue at Village Pump, or directly with adminstrators. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 07:55, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

It's on the VP discussion. Nobody seems to care. Fæ (talk) 07:57, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Template Drafting..

In respect of : Category:The 1965 Lakota High School yearbook , Can you help draft, {{Should be Document}}?

Something along the lines of (in english): "This work was uploaded as a collection of individual scans, but represents a complete work. The Individual scans should be collated into a SINGLE, archival format document, such as DJVU (or PDF), for which shared meta-data could also be provided using a {{Book}} template."? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:11, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Looking at the source code was related templates, I wasn't confident in being able to get the format for internationlization right.

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:11, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

No bid. Years ago the WMF messed up templates, making it a multi-stage process to do anything to them. Once upon a time I created several common templates, so an example of making it too bureaucratic drives away volunteers. Fæ (talk) 09:04, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

I've drafted an initial English language version. And applied it to the category. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:06, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Maybe interesting statistics

Hi! As you're involved in DPLA discussion, in general, these statistics may be interesting for you: Data:Cumulative files and size by day on Wikimedia Commons.tab, Data:Files and data on Wikimedia Commons per year.tab. The first shows daily changes and the last yearly changes. I update them every week. Maybe you like it :). Kind regards --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 13:21, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

A small non-AI experiment

We created Category:MLS real estate cards with photos and will very slowly (thanks to the WMF throttling volunteers so hard this is estimated to take a month) add cards with photos from the parent cat which is mostly boring looking text cards. As said this is not AI as it doesn't use any smart identification, it's not even OCR, this is purely based on the fact that cards with the photos have different proportions of white space, something that basic image processing can handle very efficiently.

Category:MLS real estate blank cards uses the same type of test, with super boring, and therefore interesting results.

Feedback welcome! This tiny experiment, probably less than 10,000 files, might give ways of processing other large categories of slightly dull stuff to make more engaging for volunteers. Fæ (talk) 09:28, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

The criteria have been shifted slightly to compensate for very faded photos like (Beechwold Trails) Pickerington - DPLA - 785fb3047389892b76c64df0ef34c6d5 (page 54).jpg. It's a fine line between missing photos or accidentally including text pages that are very busy with handwritten notes. The goal is to have relatively few errors but having none appears impossible to do. --Fæ (talk) 13:28, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

IA duplicate editions.

Given that you've commented on the DPLA duplicates, Do we have process to help identify if media uploaded ( excpeting the PDF vs DJVU format issue.) to identifty if two volumes uploaded from IA archives are in fact the same edition's just scanned slightly differently, or from different sources.? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:57, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

For non-identical duplicates this would be hard to impossible. Keep in mind that book editions might be 99.99% identical in text but still be validly different editions, and matching up, say, scans done 20 years apart would mostly rely on the identification of the publication being easy to find (like IA ID or ISBN).

For specific collections this could be done cheaply based on catalogue identification, but generically it's not realistic. Fæ (talk) 09:06, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Exact same edition (different format) can can be found by matching IA id's (the Djvu vs PDF issue). I' will concede over different book editions. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:05, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Another task would be the IA harmonization project which stalled when you took an extended absence, as would identification of work as scan collection (JPG category). I've tried to start a 'collation' pages subcat on the DPLA uploads, possibly not entirly fool-proof though. :( 10:05, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

File:U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) junior Joseph Flescher, left, leads the USAFA banners across the end zone after a touchdown during the USAFA Falcons football game against the Idaho State Bengals at Falcon Stadium 120901-F-JM997-804.jpg

File:U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) junior Joseph Flescher, left, leads the USAFA banners across the end zone after a touchdown during the USAFA Falcons football game against the Idaho State Bengals at Falcon Stadium 120901-F-JM997-804. (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)
Commons:Deletion requests/File:U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) junior Joseph Flescher, left, leads the USAFA banners across the end zone after a touchdown during the USAFA Falcons football game against the Idaho State Bengals at Falcon Stadium 120901-F-JM997-804. JosephFlescher (talk) 02:08, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

File:Led by junior Joseph Flescher, the U.S. Air Force Academy Falcons charge the field prior to the Air Force Falcons football game against the Idaho State Bengals at Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sept 120901-F-JM997-603.jpg

File:Led by junior Joseph Flescher, the U.S. Air Force Academy Falcons charge the field prior to the Air Force Falcons football game against the Idaho State Bengals at Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sept 120901-F-JM997-603.j (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)
Commons:Deletion requests/File:Led by junior Joseph Flescher, the U.S. Air Force Academy Falcons charge the field prior to the Air Force Falcons football game against the Idaho State Bengals at Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sept 120901-F-JM997-603.j JosephFlescher (talk) 02:11, 18 July 2026 (UTC)